Animal organ transplant warning 'ignored'

A study revealing safety and ethical concerns over using animal organs in lifesaving transplants to humans has been ditched by the Department of Health.

Leading medical ethicists warn in the report that the NHS would face huge compensation claims if lethal viruses emerged from the experiments.

But Ministers have refused to publish the report, saying it 'lacks balance'.

This comes less than a fortnight after sacked Environment Minister Michael Meacher claimed the Government's Food Standards Agency had effectively tried to bury worrying results of the only human trials into GM food.

Last night, experts commissioned by the Government to write the report which came out against clinical trials involving animal to human transplants - known as xenotransplants - said they were 'mystified' why their study had been mothballed.

In the 350-page document, they warned that sick patients desperate for transplants would face the appalling choice of death or risking an unknown illness from an animal organ inside their body.

They would have to agree to lifelong monitoring, not to have children and never to have unprotected sex, in case viruses were passed on.

Due to the pressure patients would be under because of their ill health, consent to the transplant may not be legally valid, and the Government could be sued if something went wrong.

Some scientists have argued that using genetically-altered pigs whose organs would not be rejected by the human immune system could help solve the current shortage of organs for transplant.

Hope has been bolstered by suggestions that technology would support human trials within two years, following the birth of cloned piglets with genetically-altered organs.

The Government says it cannot decide whether to allow clinical trials before the full safety and ethical implications are assessed and it has commissioned three studies.

Two reports have been published by the UK Xenotransplantation Interim Regulatory Authority, which advises the Government.

But its refusal to publish the latest study, by Professor Sheila McLean and Dr Laura Williamson of Glasgow University, is seen by some as an attempt to quash dissent.

A Department of Health spokesman said of the report: 'After a peer review, it was felt the document was not as balanced as it could be, but the authors are free to publish it elsewhere if they wish.' Professor McLean, a medical and legal expert who was asked by Scottish health ministers to chair an inquiry into organ retention in hospitals, said: 'We are rather mystified about why it is not being published by the Department of Health.

'We are academics, we have no axe to grind. We presented the issues as we saw them.

'Our conclusion was, at the moment it would be inappropriate to proceed to clinical trials because of ethical and legal inadequacies. Legal issues have not been adequately discussed and explored.'

Professor McLean said that out of four anonymous peer reviewers - likely to have been medical and legal experts - three were positive and one was 'aggressively negative'.

Dan Lyon, of animal rights group Uncaged Campaigns, said the Government's decision was 'sinister' and claimed its 'commitment to open democratic debate is a sham.'